Life > January 31, 2008

By Jacob Bathanti | Staff writer

In a recent article for the BBC, Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o bewailed that in his beloved Kenya, current events mirror those of his latest novel, as the country’s power èlites become homogenous in their indifference to the plight of the people.

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Wizard of the Crow was published in 2006, a widely sprawling, wildly ambitious tapestry of “Africa in the twentieth century in the context of 2,000 years of world history.”

While this may sound daunting, and while Ngugi inevitably stumbles a little in the course of his 766-page saga, Wizard is a work of almost prescient timeliness. It centers around two interlocking sets of characters.

One set is composed of the brutal, megalomaniacal Ruler (his given name is not permitted to be mentioned by his citizens, and thus it is not given to us) of the fictional Republic of Aburiria, and his ministers and henchmen.

The other is a pair of not-so-ordinary commoners of Aburiria: Kamiti and his lady-love, Nyawira.

The plot centers roughly around the Ruler’s plan to build a modern-day Tower of Babel, by which he will be able to ascend to Heaven to talk to God whenever he wishes.

He is abetted in this out-sizedly grandiose scheme by Silver Sikiokuu, a minister who has had his ears surgically stretched to hear any rumors the Ruler might want to hear, and his deadly rival Machokali, who had his eyes enlarged to spy out any and all threats to the minister.

Meanwhile, Kamiti frightens away policemen who are chasing him and Nyawira by pretending that Nyawira’s house belongs to a traditional sorcerer, whose title provides that of the book.

Nyawira is leading a dissident group agitating for democracy, and so it is equally imperative that she stay safe.

Kamiti decides to set up permanent shop as a wizard, combining his knowledge of herbs with brilliant showmanship to cure illnesses of the mind and body.

If this doesn’t sound like a conventional realist work in the vein of Ngugi’s masterpieces Petals of Blood and A Grain of Wheat, you’re paying attention.

Wizard of the Crow is a tour-de-force of magical realism, a movement pioneered in Latin America and functions as a literary tool of global reach and applicability in understanding the postmodern era in which individuals and nations must navigate today. Lines between fantasy and brutal realism blur and overlap throughout the book.

The verifiable phenomenon of police repression – widespread across Kenya as I write this is described faithfully.

But these same truisms are then pitched into a house of mirrors.

Government agents find themselves circling endless crowds of suppressed citizens, like Cyclists of the Apocalypse, and returning after months on the road, their clothes ripped from their backs by the wind of their passing, having been unable to find an end to the lines of people they were sent out to count.

Much of the book is frenetic in its action and crammed with fantasia.

Men and women are stricken dumb by a mysterious illness which Kamiti dubs “White-ache.”

Struck with a devastating desire for the privileges of wealth and power enjoyed by whites, sufferers can utter only the phrase “what if.”

Using an allegedly magic mirror, Kamiti undertakes the task of curing them.

Ngugi weaves these narratives, and various subsidiary tales, together.

Kamiti and Nyawira pursue their vocations of healing individuals and the nation respectively, and their relationship deepens.

The Ruler and his henchmen jostle for power and seek funding from the Global Bank for the Marching to Heaven project.

Ngugi also feeds a rainbow of historical and folkloric threads into his loom, to turn out a tale of incredible allusive depth.

He hearkens back to African history, installing at one point an Emperor who recalls the certifiably mad Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who proclaimed himself the Emperor of the Central African Republic and claimed after his deposition to be the Thirteenth Apostle.

The queuing which people engage in throughout the book is a reference to methods of vote-counting during the utterly corrupt 1988 election.

Traditional Kenyan folktales inform much of the book as well: the Ruler’s henchmen are portrayed as covert ogres, who in Kenyan tradition are cannibals.

Ngugi, in a turn which surely may be applied to the power-hungry contenders for the Kenyan presidency at the moment, accuses the elites of Africa of anthropophagy: they devour their own people.

Ngugi’s book is not without flaws.

His colloquial, conversational style, while intended as a deliberate break from Western colonialist traditions, seems in some places to be simply poor writing.

And the book drags in places, simply by virtue of its length.

Overall, however, it is a massive achievement in the field of post-colonial literature

It is also painfully current in its topics as well.